A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Magda Hassan]

I'm still waiting for the Syrian people to rise up against their leader. Any day now....Looks like only Israel and Al Qaida can speak for the Syrian people. No doubt they will be giving back the Golan Heights when the dust settles too...

[Adele Edisen]

Did Syrian "Rebels" Cross Red Line?
UN Has Testimony That Syrian Rebels Used Sarin Gas - Investigator
By Reuters

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's
civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent
sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e34834.htm [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=00173fBSEKrr...ODH-07Q4=]


Did Rebels Cross Red Line?

UN Has Testimony That Syrian Rebels Used Sarin Gas - Investigator

By Reuters

May 06, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"Reuters" - May 5 (Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

"Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.

Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.

The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and other human rights violations is separate from an investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria instigated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which has since stalled.

President Bashar al-Assad's government and the rebels accuse each another of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks, one near Aleppo and another near Damascus, both in March, and another in Homs in December.

The civil war began with anti-government protests in March 2011. The conflict has now claimed an estimated 70,000 lives and forced 1.2 million Syrian refugees to flee.

The United States has said it has "varying degrees of confidence" that sarin has been used by Syria's government on its people.

President Barack Obama last year declared that the use or deployment of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a "red line". (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

See also

Turkish doctors say no nerve gas in Syrian victims' blood: Doctors in Turkey say initial tests of blood samples from victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria last month are negative for sarin gas.

Adele

[Magda Hassan]

Did Syrian "Rebels" Cross Red Line?
UN Has Testimony That Syrian Rebels Used Sarin Gas - Investigator
By Reuters

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's
civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent
sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e34834.htm [http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=00173fBSEKrr...ODH-07Q4=]

Ha! Beat me to it Adele :wavey:
Regardless that it is the western rebels it will be Assad who gets the blame....

[Magda Hassan]

Carla Del Ponte was once a willing collaborator with NATO and such and but she seems to have decided to stop playing with them since the time she wrote her autobiography. She is again not supporting the official lie about the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government against their people.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Did Syrian "Rebels" Cross Red Line?
UN Has Testimony That Syrian Rebels Used Sarin Gas - Investigator
By Reuters

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's
civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent
sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

Of course the deep political reality is that the "Red Line" only exists for those who are determined "the Enemy".

And "the Enemy" is whomever western interests and NATO declare to be so.

In the case of Syria, Bashar al-Assad's government has been declared "the Enemy".

So, MSM will turn a blind eye to the facts established by UN Human Rights investigators of "rebel" use of chemical weapons.

The lesson is straight out of Orwell: Al Qaeda can use Sarin to kill and maim the Syrian people and no Red Line is crossed.

Power and hypocrisy.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Oh lookee here, a BBC "diplomatic correspondent" feels the need to slap Carla Del Ponte down.

What a complete disgrace.

It shows that the officially sanctioned narrative is breaking down.

Bridget Kendall Diplomatic correspondent, BBC News

This is not the first time rebel forces in Syria have come under suspicion for using chemical weapons.

The Syrian government has accused them, and some independent commentators have speculated some groups could conceivably have got hold of stocks when storming government facilities.

But allegations about sarin gas use, possibly by Syrian rebels, coming from a senior UN official is a different matter. Carla del Ponte is a former war crimes prosecutor and serves on a UN commission looking into human rights abuses in Syria. So any comments from her carry weight.

However, this is hardly a formal UN position. She was speaking informally in TV and radio interviews, and freely admits that looking at the use of chemical weapons in Syria is not part of her remit.

All her team did was collect testimony, which they will now, no doubt, pass on to the separate UN team of weapons inspectors waiting in Cyprus for permission to enter Syria to make a full investigation.

In the meantime her comments are likely to make Western governments even more cautious in their preliminary assessments.

[Lauren Johnson]

from As'ad AbuKhalil: http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/angry...yria-again

There is no mystery anymore. Israel has been a major player in the Syrian conflict. The Syrian conflict has been an open arena for all the enemies of Syria dubbed for historical irony as "friends of Syria" to help themselves to the destruction of Syria the country and not the regime. In fact, all the enemies of Syria would have preferred a deal that would keep the regime intact in order to reassure Israel.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey were the visible players in Syria, but US and Israel were not far behind (or ahead). After all, the Western media are quite explicit that Qatar and Saudi Arabia would not act without the consent and orders from the White House. This is the second major bombing by Israel in Syria, but Israel has been most likely as it was in Iraq complicit in the assassinations of Syrian scientists and its opponents. There has never been a civil war or an internal conflict in the Arab world in which Israel has not played a major role. Some American media noted the presence of Mossad agents in Syria; Free Syrian Army gangs have been working with them.

The US and Israel have decided that the war criminal gangs of the FSA are the chosen militias that can receive US (and presumably Israeli) military aid. Those are very much like the warlords of Afghanistan: criminals who are willing to chant the right slogans and to issue the right press releases in return for large sums of cash and Western assistance.

Watching Saudi and Qatari media today was a return to the past: the spokespeople (let us call them spokesmen as they all are men in this pitiful "revolution" that was ostensibly led by secular and feminist women, according to the early pre-prepared narrative in the Western media and college campus presentations) of the Syrian exile opposition were actually gleeful that their country is being bombed by Israel. They used the same language that Bashir Gemayyel used to justify his relationship with Israel during the long years of the Lebanese civil war (and prior). They spoke about accepting help from anyone, "even Satan." We know this code language. And some spokesmen of the opposition started to play their assigned role in the Israeli psychological operation by suddenly announcing that "large sections" of the Syrian Army have started to defect basically as soon as the bombing had begun.

This was never a "revolution". I among other leftists in Lebanon signed a petition early on after the events in Deraa in which we denounced the regime and mocked and dismissed its narrative of armed groups roaming the country and shooting at people. I now figure that I was dead wrong: I do believe that armed groups were pre-prepared and armed to strike when orders (from Israel and GCC countries) arrive. They had a mission and it had nothing to do with the cause of liberation of Syria from a tyrannical regime.

The regime is still silent; probably resorting to its dreaded line about determining "the time and place of the battle with Israel." But the battle never comes and responses to Israeli attacks never come either. The Golan is still occupied and the regime (like the opposition) is only willing to use its firepower inside Syria (or inside Lebanon in previous years) but not against Israel. Similarly, the Syrian armed groups have been flirting with Israel for a while now and their game has been exposed today. Their token statement of "neutrality" is belied by the statements of opposition "activists" on various opposition Facebook pages.

The US government and media play their usual roles. Never question what Israel does anywhere in the world. Justifications are provided instantly, and it was not a coincidence that the New York Times had a front page story about poor little Israel and how it has to fend for itself to defend itself from the conflict and turmoil in Syria. Only a week ago, David Ignatius of the Washington Post, having received different propaganda marching orders from the Israeli government, reported that Israel was in fact calm and just enjoying the carnage in Syria.

The conflict in Syria has long been outside of the hands of the Syrian people. It is not that a local-internal conflict became regional and international over a two years period. No, it was regional-international from the start. The US and its clients in the Arab counter-revolution movement were ready to steer Arab uprisings in a direction that pleases US and Israel. The fall of Mubarak required the fall of the Assad regime although the US and Israel are discovering that they can continue to do business with the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is not to say that the Syrian people don't have more than a hundred reasons to overthrow the Syrian regime. They do, but this was not about the underlying causes of revolt in Syria. The Qatari, Saudi, Turkish, Israeli, and US beef with the Syrian regime was never about democracy. The Syrian regime had brutally repressed revolts and uprisings before and there were no criticisms heard and the Saudi government (and later the Qatari) was willing to bankroll the Assad dynasty provided that the two work together in Lebanon and in the region.

It is not that the there is no Syrian revolution (and there is not), but the outcome of the conflict in Syria is now certainly not going to be democratic. You can make that prediction on the basis of the sponsors of the "revolutionaries" and the ideology (and practices) of the active armed groups in Syria. But the Syrian armed groups are being fooled by US and Israel into thinking that the Syrian throne is now within their reach, while the two sides hope for a longer protracted conflict that would exhaust and fatigue the entire Syrian nation and would distract them from considering harming Israeli interests.

The Syrian regime has shown in the past that it was willing to do business under the table with Israel. The Syrian National Coalition and all the active armed groups in Syria have proven that they are willing to align with Israel before they reach power and to do business over the table. That can only bode ill for the future of Syria.

[Magda Hassan]

If any one knows about flakey intelligence it is Colin Powell

'Israel may be behind Syrian chemical weapons use'

By JPOST.COM STAFF
05/04/2013 23:30

Former Bush administration official says Syrian chemical weapons use might've been "false flag operation" of Israel.

Retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. Photo: Screenshot
A former senior official in the Bush administration said on Thursday the use of chemical weapons in Syria might have been a "false flag operation" of Israel, meant to implicate Syrian President Bashar Assad.
"We don't know what the chain of custody is. This could've been an Israeli false flag operation, it could've been an opposition in Syria... or it could've been an actual use by Bashar Assad. But we certainly don't know with the evidence we've been given. And what I'm hearing from the intelligence community is that that evidence is really flakey," retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, told Cenk Uygur in an interview with Current TV.

Given this "flimsy evidence," Wilkerson doesn't believe a red line has been crossed in Syria, and that the US should not base its intervention in the war-torn country based on such evidence.
Wilkerson criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu harshly, saying there is a "geostratigically, geopolitical inept regime in Tel Aviv right now."


"We saw really startling evidence of that in the fact that [US] President [Barack] Obama had to tell Bibi Netanyahu, 'pick up the phone, you idiot, and call Ankara and get yourself out of this strategic isolation you're in right now, do a reconciliation with Turkey, the most powerful country in the region,' otherwise Bibi probably wouldn't have done it," he said.
He also said the prime minister was "clueless" as to the grave security situation Israel is in.

http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israel-...use-312051

[Magda Hassan]

America is Losing its Covert Syria War: US Sponsored Al Nusra Rebels Defeated by Syrian Armed Forces

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, May 12, 2013
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-is-loosing-its-covert-syria-war-us-sponsored-al-nusra-rebels-defeated-by-syrian-armed-forces/5334827


Recent reports from the ground suggest that America and its allies are losing their covert war in support of the Al Nusra front. In recent weeks, the US sponsored Al Qaeda affiliated rebels have been decimated by the Syrian Armed Forces.
A nationwide offensive has been launched with the support of Russia and Iran. The weapons supply routes of the rebels have been disrupted:
"the [Syrian] army has concentrated on starving, and cutting off "rebel" supply routes and arms corridors, which predominantly run through Northern Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan" (See Buying Time in Syria by Phil Greaves, Global Research, May 11, 2013)
Al Nusra is largely made up of mercenaries recruited in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Covert (Western) special forces and military advisers have also integrated their ranks.
The Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists directly funded by Washington constitute the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance.
Confirmed by CNN, the Al Nusra terrorists have also been trained in the use of chemical weapons by special forces on contract to the Pentagon:
The training [in chemical weapons], which is taking place in Jordan and Turkey, involves how to monitor and secure stockpiles and handle weapons sites and materials, according to the sources. Some of the contractors are on the ground in Syria working with the rebels to monitor some of the sites, according to one of the officials.
The nationality of the trainers was not disclosed, though the officials cautioned against assuming all are American. (CNN, December 09, 2012, emphasis added
And once these Al Qaeda rebels had been supplied and trained in the use of WMDs by military contractors hired by the Pentagon, the Syrian government would then be held responsible for using the WMD against the Syrian people.
US Sponsored Terrorists
The most recent report by SANA, the official news agency (March 12) provides details on actions taken by the Syrian armed forces against Al Nusra rebels in different parts of the country:

Units of the armed forces on Saturday continued chasing terrorist groups in several areas in Damascus and its countryside, inflicting heavy losses upon their members, including non-Syrians.
An official source told SANA reporter that an army unit carried out a special operation in al-Beiraqdar neighborhood in Hijeira town that resulted in the killing of a number of terrorists.
…

The source added that numbers of terrorists were killed and their weapons were destroyed in al-Husseiniyeh town.
An army unit chased members of a terrorist group in al-Fakhoureh area in Wadi Barada market and killed most of them, while another army unit carried out killed four terrorists, including two snipers, in Daraya city.
A unit of the armed forces clashed with an armed terrorist group in Harasta city and killed a number of them, while another unit clashed with an armed terrorist group in Jobar and eliminated all its members and destroyed their weapons.
Also in Damascus Countryside, a military source said that Army units assumed control of al-Abbadeh area and the surrounding farms in the eastern Ghouta region, and the Armed Forces continued to advance in the town of Jarba from three points and seized control of vital areas around the town in order to cut off supplies from terrorists and encircle them.
An Armed Forces unit clashed with terrorists from Jabhet al-Nusra who were committing robberies and theft in the town of Jassem in Daraa countryside, injuring a number of them and killing others, including a Saudi called Ammar al-Shemmari and a Kuwaiti called Mahmoud al-Mtairi, both of which were leaders in Jabhet al-Nusra and responsible for manufacturing explosives.
…
Terrorists groups in Aleppo continue to suffer heavy losses at the hands of the army units which carried out today several operations that resulted in destroying amounts of weapons and ammunition in the terrorists' dens.
SANA reporter quoted an official source as saying that numbers of terrorists were killed and others were injured to the north of the electricity company in al-Sheikh Saeed area and near al-Tawabeen Mosque and at the entrance of Handarat camp.
A heavy machinegun and various types of weapons and ammunition were destroyed in the aforementioned areas.
The source also mentioned that units of the armed forces killed a number of terrorists in the surrounding of the industrial City, the Free Zone, the glass factory and al-Zira'a area.
The army members destroyed the terrorists' equipment and weapons, including a 23 mm caliber anti-aircraft gun, a heavy machinegun and a number of cars loaded with weapons and ammunition, the source added.
In Minnegh town, an army unit killed members of an armed terrorist group and injured others in al-Alqamiyeh area and near the Agricultural Research Center.
Other terrorists were killed near al-Daqaq factory and to the south of Ibrahim al-Khalil Mosque in Khan al-Assal. A car loaded with weapons and ammunition was destroyed in the area.
…
Units of the armed forces continued targeting the gatherings and dens of Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists in the countryside of Idleb.
SANA reporter quoted an official source as saying that the army units destroyed weapons and equipment the terrorists had been using in their criminal acts in the surrounding of al-Fanar restaurant in Jabal al-Arabaeen area.
Many terrorists were killed and others were injured in the town of Kfarlata and the city of Ariha that are affiliated to Jabal al-Arbaeen area.
The source added that units of the armed forces destroyed terrorists' dens, along with the weapons and ammunition inside, in the towns of Ein al-Qasab, Mashmashan, Qatroun, al-Najiyeh, Ein al-Barideh, Bazit, Darkoush, Heish, Tall Salmo, Um Jreen, al-Buweiti, al-Tur'eh and Mseibin.
In the same context, members of a terrorist group were eliminated near M'atrem town on Ariha-Jisr al-Shughour road, while army units continue pursuing terrroists in the surrounding of the brick factory and al-Shabibeh camp.
In the city of Saraqeb, an army unit killed and injured several terrorists affiliated to the so-called al-Tawhid Brigade' in the surrounding of the Pullman garage. The terrorists' weapons and equipment were seized.
…
In the meantime, an army unit eliminated members of an armed terrorist group in Jub al-Ahmar village in the countryside of Hama and destroyed their weapons, which included heavy machineguns.
…
The Army units continued pursuing the armed teorrist groups in several neighborhoods in Deir Ezzor city and killed scores of them.
An official source told SANA reporter that a unit of the armed forces destroyed a terrorist gathering in al-Sinaa neighborhood, while another unit eliminated an armed terrorist group at al-Siyasieh bridge. (SANA, May 11, 2013

Ironically, while the Al Nusra terrorists are directly supported and financed by the Pentagon, they are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
Secretary of State John Kerry's recent initiatives have largely been instrumental in increasing the flow of money and military support to the terrorists under the disguise of "humanitarian aid".

Political Turnaround
The UN Security Council is slated to add the al-Nusra Front to its sanctions blacklist. Ironically this initiative comes "as the Syrian government asked the Security Council to blacklist al-Nusra last month, but the request was blocked by Britain and France." (Press TV, May 11, 2013).
Now that Al Nusra, an entity created and sponsored by Western intelligence, is being decimated by the Syrian Armed Forces, the US and its allies are calling for the channeling of weapons and financial support to the more moderate "non-Islamist" rebel factions.
France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has called on the UN to classify Syria's al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organisation "in order to differentiate the Islamist group from other opposition forces"

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius pressed the United Nations on Thursday to blacklist Syria's al-Nusra Front as a terrorist organisation, in an effort to set the militant Islamist group apart from other more moderate opposition forces in the country.
"In order to avoid any ambiguity, we suggest that the al-Nusra Front, which is opposed to [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad but is also a branch of al Qaeda, be classified as a terrorist organisation on the UN level,'" the French foreign minister stated in an interview with French daily Le Monde.
Fabius also said that France wanted to increase its support of Syria's opposition organisation, the Syrian National Coalition, highlighting that it needed to "grow, unify and clearly guarantee that the rights of all communities be respected in the event of a regime change".

What these developments suggest is that Al Nusra rebels are cannon fodder. They are no longer supported and upheld as freedom fighters.
Washington in consultation with its Western allies has decided to sacrifice its Al Qaeda affiliated foot-soldiers who are now being decimated by the Syrian army.
While Britain and France had blocked Syria's earlier initiative to include Al Nusra on the United Nations Security Council terrorist list, the initiative is now emanating not from Syria but from those countries, which until recently were providing the Al Nusra front, with money and weapons.
Moreover, Washington's direct financial support to Al Nusra, brokered by Obama's new Secretary of State John Kerry, has become, to say the least, the source of diplomatic embarrassment.
In this regard, it is worth noting that an American citizen who is indirectly suspected, with or without evidence, of supporting an Al Qaeda affiliated entity would immediately be arrested, with of course the exception of Secretary of the State John Kerry, among other senior US officials, who are supporting Al Qaeda units on behalf of the US government.
Those who are waging the "Global War on Terrorism" are supporting the terrorists. But its all for cause: support "good guy terrorists" with a view to "promoting democracy".

[Jan Klimkowski]

Heart of Darkness.

Again.

Syria mutilation footage sparks doubts over wisdom of backing rebels

Anti-Assad fighter appears to eat internal organ of dead government soldier in horrific footage

Ian Black and Martin Chulov
The Guardian, Tuesday 14 May 2013 18.42 BST
Jump to comments (255)

Free Syrian Army fighters walk on rubble of damaged buildings in Juret al-Shayah in Homs
Free Syrian Army fighters in Homs, cradle of the Farouq Brigades. Photograph: Yazan Homsy/Reuters

Horrific video footage of a Syrian rebel commander eating the heart or lung of a dead government fighter has aroused furious international controversy, fuelling an already heated debate over western support for the armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The grisly film had been circulating for several days, attracting extensive comment on social media networks such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. But in the face of an often vicious propaganda war between the government and rebels, early doubts about the film's authenticity faded when the perpetrator, named as Khaled al-Hamad, admitted that he had mutilated the corpse of an unnamed soldier as an act of revenge.

"We opened his cell phone and I found a clip of a woman and her two daughters fully naked and he [the dead soldier] was humiliating them, and sticking a stick here and there," Hamad told the Time news website.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), an independent monitor, said: "The figure in the video cuts the heart and liver out of the body and uses sectarian language to insult Alawites [Assad's minority sect]. At the end of the video [the man] is filmed putting the corpse's heart into his mouth, as if he is taking a bite out of it."

Hamad, also known as Abu Sakkar, said he also had video footage of himself using a saw to cut a Shabiha government militiaman into "small and large pieces".

Yasser Taha, a fellow fighter, told the Guardian an unnamed female relative of Abu Sakkar had been raped and killed by government soldiers. Time said he had in fact eaten the dead man's lung, not his liver or heart.

The Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), the main western and Arab-backed anti-Assad political grouping, quickly condemned the incident as a crime and pledged to bring the perpetrator to justice.

Atrocities have been reported since the start of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, but few images have been as repulsive as this one. Film of prisoners apparently being buried alive turned out to have been faked, but other shocking footage proved genuine.

"It is not enough for Syria's opposition to condemn such behaviour or blame it on violence by the government," said Nadim Houry of HRW. "The opposition forces need to act firmly to stop such abuses."

The SOC said: "Such an act contradicts the morals of the Syrian people as well as the values and principles of the Free Syrian Army. The FSA has been [fighting] and continues to fight for the dignity of every Syrian striving for freedom.

"The FSA is a national army above all, formed to defend civilians and deliver the Syrian people from the mentality of revenge and crime. It completely rejects the ill-treatment of the wounded and the disfigurement of the dead."

The video is a blow to faltering western efforts to raise and mentor a credible opposition force to fight for democracy, in the event that the Assad regime falls.

International revulsion seems likely to affect discussions in western capitals about supporting the FSA. Britain and France have been seeking to amend or drop the EU arms embargo on Syria. The Obama administration has signalled that it may start openly supplying the rebels but has not done so yet. The CIA has reportedly been co-ordinating arms deliveries by anti-Assad Gulf states.

Opposition supporters complained that one savage act was getting massive global media coverage while the death of an estimated 80,000 people was being tolerated by the international community.

"This distressing incident is one example of warfare gone completely askew, but it clearly doesn't represent the Syrian opposition at large," said Julien Barnes-Dacey of the European Council for Foreign Relations in London. "It doesn't compare in scale with massacres and atrocities committed by the Syrian regime. But it does play into fears about where the conflict is going and whether arming the rebels is the right approach."

Sakkar was a well-known member of the Farouq Brigades, a unit that rose from the ruins of the Baba Amr suburb of Homs and became one of the rebels' best resourced fighting forces.

During the first 18 months of the war, the Farouq Brigades were seen as a cohesive militia with mainstream leanings, which could credibly fight under the banner of the FSA. Then and now, the FSA has struggled to assemble a command-and-control structure to control the large numbers of rebel-aligned groups, which mostly answer to local leaders.

"It highlights the fact that we are not talking about a centrally controlled and well-organised rebel force," Barnes-Dacey said. "These are rebels fighting in distinct areas according to their own needs and ambitions. Some are driven by a thirst for revenge, criminalisation, sectarianism … These are the array of forces that have been unleashed in Syria today."

Farouq became established in Idlib, where it was backed by Qatar and at times Saudi Arabia. Late last year, Sakkar formed a splinter group, which he called the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade.

For the last six months this small unit has joined the fray in Qusayr, which borders Lebanon and is seen as a strategic crossroads by regime and rebels.

Sakkar's sectarian rhetoric has hardened considerably lately, and he has often been recorded denouncing Alawites and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia that is heavily involved in battles near Homs.

Hamad told Time that Syria's revolution started peacefully. "They [the Alawites] were the ones who killed our children in Baba Amr and raped our women," he said. Then, referring to the recent massacre of Sunni villagers in Bayda, near Baniyas attributed by rebels to the regime he added: "They were the ones who slaughtered the children and women in Bayda. We didn't start it; they started it."

Swearing to avenge every death, he said: "Our slogan is, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

Additional reporting by Mona Mahmood